{"id":176628,"date":"2020-05-01T19:18:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-02T00:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/05\/01\/a-well-deserved-comeuppance\/"},"modified":"2020-05-01T19:18:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-02T00:18:00","slug":"a-well-deserved-comeuppance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/05\/01\/a-well-deserved-comeuppance\/","title":{"rendered":"A Well Deserved Comeuppance"},"content":{"rendered":"
One of the results of Airbnb is that there have been a whole bunch of people who have overextended to acquite properties for short term rentals, either by purchasing them, or by renting long term and subleasing short term for a premium.<\/div>\n

This has had the effect of driving the costs of rentals up. (See here<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The pandemic lock-down is wiping out the people speculating on properties as pricey short term rentals<\/a>:<\/p>\n

For years, Cheryl Dopp considered the ding on her phone from a new Airbnb Inc. booking to be the sound of what she called \u201cmagical money.\u201d A property she rented out in Jersey City, N.J., on Airbnb could gross more than $8,000 a month, she said, double what long-term tenants would pay. <\/p>\n

Now, Ms. Dopp associates the dings with cancellations and financial misery. The 54-year-old information-technology contractor said she had about $10,000 in bookings evaporate overnight in March. She has $22,000 in monthly expenses for a largely Airbnb portfolio, she said, that included another Jersey City home and a house in Miami. <\/p>\n

In her mind, the promise of more rental income offset the growing debt, she said. \u201cI made a bargain with the devil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Dopp is part of an upper-crust dimension of the gig economy<\/a>: property owners and speculators who bought or leased real estate in pursuit of Airbnb profits. Airbnb spawned a cottage industry of homeowners running their own property empires, turning the startup into a hotelier without any hotels.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

In Nashville, Tenn., which grants permits to hosts, about a dozen of the city\u2019s 3,600 nonowner-occupied listings\u2014which include Airbnb properties\u2014surfaced in the first days of April as advertisements for one-year leases on Zillow or Craigslist, according to Host Compliance LLC, a software provider tracking permits for the city. City leaders said they feared more would follow. <\/p>\n

One of the apartments is in City View, a development with a swimming pool and rooftop views of downtown. When City View was completed in 2015, councilman Freddie O\u2019Connell, who represents the district and has worked to rein in short-term rentals, hoped it would lure young professionals and families and help ease the city\u2019s housing shortage. Instead, he said, it became a haven for short-term rentals.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Airbnb thought that they would help people rent out spare rooms or basement apartments, and instead it has become a vehicle for unproductive real estate arbitrage, because everything in the United States becomes a vehicle for unproductive arbitrage.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, the pandemic, and the collapse of Airbnb, will result in a reduction in long term rents that have priced people out of housing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the results of Airbnb is that there have been a whole bunch of people who have overextended to acquite properties for short term rentals, either by purchasing them, or by renting long term and subleasing short term for a premium. This has had the effect of driving the costs of rentals up. (See …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[456,572,393,486],"class_list":["post-176628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-finance","tag-pandemic","tag-real-estate","tag-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}